It’s a story that will give Leeds United supporters déjà vu; a homegrown, academy graduate midfielder reaching a crossroads at his beloved club and weighing up his options.
Last summer, Kalvin Phillips said an emotional goodbye to life at Leeds after Manchester City offered him the chance to play Champions League football and fight for the beautiful game’s most coveted prizes. What are the chances of Declan Rice making a similarly heart-wrenching decision some 12 months later?
“I see my friends playing Champions League, winning the big trophies,” Declan Rice said a couple of weeks ago (90Min).
“You only get one career. At the end of your career, you want to look back at what you’ve won and the biggest games you’ve played in. I’m really ambitious, and I really want to do that.”
With West Ham currently 16th in the table – just four points above bottom-placed Wolves – even the most optimistic of Hammers supporters would have to concede that, if Rice wants to showcase his talents on club football’s biggest stage, he may have to take a leaf out of Kalvin Phillips’ book.
Could Brighton’s Moises Caicedo really replace Declan Rice at West Ham United?
Now, finding a readymade replacement who is both affordable and attainable will be no easy task. But not an impossible one. According to the Daily Mail, Brighton and Hove Albion’s Moises Caicedo is viewed at the London Stadium as a possible Rice replacement, and it’s difficult to think of many players better suited to take on such a role.
Like Rice, Caicedo is a jack-of-all-trades capable of becoming a master of most. He’s a ball-carrier, a ball-winner and a ball-player rolled into one; a destroyer, a dribbler and a dictator all at once. Caicedo’s hefty price-tag, meanwhile, may also be within West Ham’s reach if Rice does go; the 23-year-old England international expected to cost somewhere in the region of £100 million.
The Mail believe that Brighton value Caicedo at around £60 million.
‘West Ham have been in contact’
Of course, West Ham could have saved themselves a lot of effort and even more money had they not missed out on the Ecuadorian enforcer just two years ago; perennial gold-panners Brighton paying a bargain £4.5 million to sign a then-19-year-old Caicedo from Independiente del Valle while snatching him from under Moyes’ nose (Sky Sports).
“My information is that West Ham United have been in contact with Independiente to ask about the framework of a deal, whether they are open to selling the player, how much it would cost, when they’d be able to do it,” reporter Duncan Castles told the Transfer Window Podcast back in December 2020.
“They are open to selling.”
In the space of two years, Caicedo’s price-tag has risen by over £50 million. That does not mean, however, that one of football’s most complete young midfielders cannot still provide plenty of value for money.
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